By Any Other Name
by Whilom
Summary: Berrisford Agenda tag: Alec lived up to his name constantly, always smirking and quirking his eyebrows as if life was a joke and he was good at calling card tricks.


**By Any Other Name - **Whilom

Alec lived up to his name constantly, always smirking and quirking his eyebrows as if life was a joke and he was good at calling card tricks. He'd gotten underfoot more times than Max could count, made trouble and then some, always had some remark that made her want to slap him upside the head hard enough to make him cringe. He was X-5 alright, chockfull of predatory DNA and alpha tendencies. It was where he got the street-smart, kick or be kicked, roll with the punches kind of attitude which formed the chip on his shoulder. Okay, skip chip. Freaking stump was more like it.

But she'd never met 494.

She thought she had. But that day in her cell back in Manticore had not been the first time she met 494. That day, him all lean muscle and enough sarcasm to give her a run for her money, introduced her to Alec. She'd said so herself at the time. Numbers had never been used between them. Stupid her, to suppose all this time that she knew Alec, when all she knew was a soldier.

Joshua had the rare gift of distilling life into chewable segments, something he did through his painting. "_Alec only outsmarts Alec. He doesn't know himself,"_ Joshua had said, eyes on the cacophony of colors before him. She had tuned his words out at the time—stupid, _stupid_—and decided to think that this was just one of Alec's moods. But Joshua had known. He had never met 494 either, but at least he knew that. Max was still under the mistaken impression that 494 had been poking at mac-n-cheese a few hours before. It seemed so much clearer now.

Monty Cora was probably one of the stupidest names she had ever heard. She'd immediately assumed the X-5 idiot who seemed determined to ruin her "normal" life was a miscreant in every sense of the word. Who in their right mind made a play on the word Manticore to use as their alias in cage-fighting? Who decided to rely on their spliced DNA to get ahead in the normal world, the very DNA they couldn't wash away or repress because Manticore was stamped on every cell of their body? He was asking for it. Simple as that. No one who wanted to be treated with respect relied on Manticore in any way to help them live life.

Simon Lehane was a mystery to her. The fact that someone had decided the name Simon was a good alias for Alec was laughable. And the thought of him teaching piano to a teenager was downright hilarious, even without the mental image of a suit, tie, and probably glasses. Simon Lehane was a snob, reserved, cautious with praise, and meticulous. Simon Lehane evoked images of marble floors, ballroom dancing, wine, and chandeliers. Simon Lehane would have been able to speak several languages, stumbling over only a few words (purposefully, of course—anyone Manticore-trained would have known mistakes weren't allowed), and sipped at lattes while he waited for a little hard work and a polished reputation to make the world fall at his feet. And that was hardly Alec.

Alec was the scumbag, the pretty-boy who could at least give her backup when she needed it, the smarty-pants who lounged on whatever happened to be around, be it a wall or any female. He was the rarely clumsy, always self-assured know-it-all who no one could remember if he'd missed a day of work before because it just seemed like something he would do. He elbowed his way into her life, teased her for it, and then snapped back a witty remark to whatever she dished out, all in the name of getting by.

But that same Alec had sat alone at a bar, trying to futilely drink his woes away, and then continued beating a man who was down for no reason at all. And that was what had Max turned around.

That was not Alec. That was 494.

Monty Cora was the talented cage champion. Simon Lehane was the polished hitman. 494 was the perfect soldier. And Alec…

Who was Alec?

Alec ran from responsibility. But Alec went above and beyond to try to get Joshua's paintings back from their buyer so Max's virus notes could be saved. Alec moved in to the apartment of a man dead not even a week. But Alec asked how she was doing, whether she'd be okay. Alec was irreverent, not above getting a lap dance during a case. But Alec had taken a bullet to the shoulder on that same case and not once complained.

_Outside, lots of pretty colors. Tricks and treats. Inside, darkness. Confusion. Alec._

Joshua could always say it best, Max reflected. "Tricks and treats" described Alec to a T. But darkness and confusion weren't things she was used to associating with the wise-cracking X-5 she knew—or thought she knew. But Joshua had rarely been wrong and his understanding of Alec rubbed Max the wrong way.

_I'm always alright_, Alec had said. But no one, not even a supercharged X-5—no, _especially_ a supercharged X-5—was always alright. So that's what it was, then. An act. His whole life was an act, making Max wonder if he'd ever been real a day in his life. He couldn't be defined because, as Joshua had said, Alec only outsmarts Alec. Underneath every name he chose, there was a common thread: Alec wanted the world to believe that he was _always alright_. But you'd go crazy if you had to live that way, playing life like it was masquerade. So many aliases, so many names, so many stories.

Ben had known stories. Ben had told the best stories, the ones that made you forgot the gray walls of your cell. Ben had told spine-chilling tales and whispered fables of hearts and teeth and making their hope stronger. It made sense that Alec would tell stories too.

The thought made Max's head spin. She couldn't, not again. Alec was not Ben. Alec could beat this. Ben had been chained by his stories, caught in his own web until he couldn't discern reality from lies. Alec—he had aliases because he could keep track of them all. They weren't separate realities, they were chapters, right? Simon Lehane was Alec getting his prissy on, 494 was Alec snapping orders and not taking no for an answer, Monty Cora was Alec living by whatever means necessary. Because if they weren't chapters, if Alec wasn't adding or taking from those experiences and was just exchanging one for the other, then Ben and Alec were the same.

But that couldn't happen. She'd failed Ben. She couldn't fail Alec.

And, really, when she calmed down and thought about it, she couldn't box Alec in at all. Like Joshua had said about Alec, she was only fooling herself. Alec was a conundrum to her because he wasn't just a fast-talking flirt with a mean right-hook and the air of an alpha. Or maybe because he was all of those things. If she put her prejudices aside, she could see a bit of the debonair in Alec, the orderly precision that Simon Lehane might have put into his car the same way that Alec put into his bike. And that glass-half-full kind of stamina he seemed to run on with devil-may-care attitude on the side was something she saw every day, even when he wasn't putting his skills to the test in a cage. And the obey-me-or-eat-it stance he sometimes took when things started getting dangerous was definitely something Manticore put into their 494 cocktail. But, beyond all that, the emotion-filled piano music she had heard after he crashed their dinner party because he was taking refuge with Joshua, the way he'd finally acknowledged that some of her barbs got under his skin, the hesitant questioning that seemed to leak out at times when he sensed she wouldn't slam him—that was Alec, too.

So, no worries about alternate realities or chapters of a mental story. She'd figured at least one part of the problem: Alec was a puzzle. She had been staring at different pieces, wondering if they were pages in a book or different names with the same face, but now it was obvious that Alec was an intricate jigsaw with pieces scattered all over, in plain sight and lumped in the shadows. She certainly had her work cut out for her. But she could do it—she could shape the pieces, fill in the blank spots, paste them together so they didn't fall apart. This time, she knew what to do. Ben had needed to be broken to be healed. Alec needed to be glued.


End file.
